


Silver Night

by hanschen_ril0w



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Late-Night Composing, M/M, a lovely grand piano, the relationships aren’t the focal point but they’re still important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 01:09:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16149374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanschen_ril0w/pseuds/hanschen_ril0w
Summary: “If you’re gonna make fun of me, go do it away from my piano,” Georg said mildly. “I’m busy.”“Busy not writing your song?”“No. Busy writing it. If I can figure out how to write the stars in.”





	Silver Night

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been wanting to write Hanschen and Georg as friends for a few months now, and I’ve always pictured it as a high school bros kind of thing, but I guess now it’s come out in this context. Hope y’all like it!

It was a deep chestnut grand piano, but it was a fractured canvas splashed with bronze light and black ink and heavy, ivory silence. A brushstroke of green lampshade. A suggestion of fingers splayed across the keys. A dusty blond smudge on the side that could have been the corner of the frame or the start of the signature.

“I can’t get past the refrain.”

Georg shifted on the bench, shoulders arching like a stiff marionette as his hands shuffled paper after paper idly across the piano lid. Paper after paper of scratched-out notes and drafts and sharps that fell flat. Paper after paper of half and quarter rests. Paper after paper of no rest. No sleep. No life.

“I know.”

“It just...” He squinted, pushed up on the bridge of his glasses with his thumb, and scanned a fistful of papers. “Do you think if I changed the key, it’d start coming out?”

Hanschen watched Georg with glassy eyes from where he was leaning on the piano. “You’ve changed it four times already, haven’t you?”

“Five. D major, E flat, G major, D flat, A flat.”

“Try making it minor.”

Georg scowled. “That would change the whole feeling.”

Hanschen shrugged, sharp and cold. “Play what you have so far.”

“Again?”

“Why not?”

“Just the accompaniment?”

“Yes.”

Georg stared at him for a second longer. Hesitant. Exhausted. If he looked past the lamp and peered through the hazy bronze light, his clock would read half past two in the morning. Finding no further cause for objection, however, Georg searched carelessly through the pages before him until he’d found the newest among them, propping them up on the stand above the keys and wincing a little when the sides ripped from his grip.

He took a shallow breath in.

He placed his hands, shaking with exhaustion and frustration and absolutely nothing at all.

He played.

A gentle flutter of notes spilled from the keys, followed by a slew of rich, drawling chords. The ink on the paper blurred a few measures in, slipping in and out of focus like soft waves on an icy ocean, and after the opening vamp, the music eased into the untouchable chill of the sea in the night. Georg felt the swing of it and the swell of it roll over him, pulling him into the deep water; Hanschen, the discarded drafts, the clock, and the lamplight all faded away. It was all one glimmer of a moment, one verse and one refrain, one pulse of the ocean, and it was all too short and all too soon.

Georg’s anchor jerked him back to reality just before he’d drifted far enough into the song to see the stars.

“It’s beautiful.” Hanschen stated this simply, in that way of his that made compliments sound like facts and facts sound like common sense. Truthfully, Georg had almost forgotten he was there, eyes closed and arms crossed and listening.

Georg mumbled a “thank you,” still half unsure if he was supposed to. “It’s missing the stars.”

“What?”

“The stars,” Georg insisted, scribbling a halfhearted grace note somewhere in the eighteenth measure. “It’s too calm and dark and solemn. It needs to shine, just a little.”

“Isn’t it kind of a dark song?”

“No.” Georg raised a hand, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows. “No. He’s a dreamer. It’s all, like, hope, and fulfillment, and finding where the light is.”

“You’re making it sound tacky.” Hanschen reached over, taking a paper from the stand and glancing it over.

“Fuck. It’s not. You know it’s not.”

Hanschen looked back up at him. “Then explain it to me again.”

“Are you just trying to frustrate me?”

“No. I’m trying to help. Tell me.”

Georg sighed, exhaling until his chest loosened. “He’s a sailor, and this is back when the stars were a compass. So he’s on his way to somewhere better, somewhere across the sea, and the whole time he’s wondering why he loves the ocean so much. That’s the thing. He sails and he lives his life on boats and he loves it, and he wishes he understood why he can’t live without it. But he doesn’t. He just keeps going because it’s who he is and what he does and because maybe if he keeps going he’ll know why.” Georg gestured to the papers strewn across the lid. “This song is him asking the stars why. Indirectly.”

Hanschen’s head was cocked to the side, and his lips were tilting ever so slightly into a smile at one corner.

Georg narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.” Hanschen’s smile grew, slick and easy. “It just sounds like you.”

“I’m not a sailor.”

“Obviously.” Hanschen skimmed the page in his hands once more. “But in college, you were always like this.”

Georg laughed, more a syllable of surprise than humor. “Like what?”

“Like...” Hanschen looked up, clearly amused in his casual little way, “You were always writing songs and booking practice rooms, but you’d come back to the dorm at night and say you wished you could be a biochemistry major or something.”

“Well, yeah,” Georg said dismissively. Defensively. “Didn’t you ever wish you had a job people wouldn’t scoff at?“

Hanschen raised his eyebrows. “No.”

“Yeah, well, okay, I did. If I could pass a science class, I would’ve gotten myself a stable career and lived in the middle of nowhere.” When Georg looked up from the keys in front of him, Hanschen was still eyeing him as if he were a mildly funny cartoon. “ _What_?”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

Georg pressed down irritably on the piano, playing a few dissonant chords. “How would you know?”

“Because you love this.”

“I wish I didn’t.”

“But you do.” Hanschen stood up straighter, stretching his back. It was late, so late— it must have been nearing three o’clock already. “If composing were a liquid, you’d be hooked up to an IV of it twenty-four hours a day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you away from a piano for more than a few hours. You love this, and even if you were some physics genius or something, you would still be right here, transposing the same song for the sixth time tonight.”

Georg was grimacing. He knew it. “I’m no worse than you.”

“Right.” Hanschen smiled, satisfied and unabashed. An actor (and currently employed as a bellhop at a midtown hotel). “No one goes into art by accident.”

“Sometimes I think art is an accident.”

“Georg, sometimes I think _you_ were an accident. Now stop wishing you were a boring suburbanite and write your damn song.”

Georg glared at him for a long moment, trying to convey all the anger he didn’t really feel. Hanschen was right, and he knew it— they both did. He loved this. It was like having a dumb childhood crush, like being perpetually stuck in clumsy teenaged love. Every time Georg played a new tune, his whole chest would feel fuzzy. Every time someone sang his notes, he felt like crying. Every time he found himself near a theater and he remembered he was here, really here, really in New York City, really within reach of Broadway and all the dreams he’d built his whole world around, he felt dizzy with amazement. And so he worked day and night by bronze lamplight, pressing the keys as if pushing and playing would awaken the soul within the thing and coax it out from under the lid.

Bronze lamplight.

It was always bronze. Always a little dusty, a little dark, a little below where he wanted to be. He’d already had two of his musicals performed in theaters on the outskirts of notability, with real casts and crews and (sometimes) audiences, but they had never gotten further. He’d written songs for events and composed for singers, but he’d never gotten anything recorded. It was always a game of crossing lines he couldn’t see. It was always a game that wasn’t lost, but was never, ever won.

“Do you remember how we used to talk?”

Hanschen blinked at him. “Hmm?”

“You know, in college.” Georg picked up his pen, scribbling in the corner of a paper to test the ink. “Me, you, Anna, and Ernst... When we’d go stay in that room up on the top floor of the library until sunrise and talk about what we were gonna be. Where we were gonna live. You know.”

Hanschen’s face relaxed in recollection. “Definitely.”

“I miss that.” Georg smiled tiredly, letting himself laugh a little. “I miss being ‘before’ everything.”

“You haven’t changed.” Hanschen shot him a teasing look. “You just _look_ old.”

Georg shook his head, playfully throwing the pen at Hanschen’s black sweater (he caught it with ease). “No, I think in this light—“

“ _Old_.” Hanschen grinned, poking the pen at Georg in the air. “Ernst says hi, by the way.”

“I know.” Georg narrowed his eyes at Hanschen like a gossiping schoolboy. “He waved at me on his way out the door two mornings ago.”

“Okay.” Hanschen shrugged. “He said he’d take you out for drinks with us, but he knows how busy you are.”

“How busy I _would_ be if I could get past the first refrain.”

“And you will.” Hanschen tossed the pen back across the piano. “I have to ask you, though.”

“What?”

Hanschen draped his arms over the lid of the piano, leaning down to look at Georg like a cat looks at a mouse. “Your inspiration for this whole musical...”

Georg rolled his eyes and fidgeted away before the question— the statement, really —had even finished. “Nope. No. Absolutely not. Coming from you, this is hilarious.”

“What’s hilarious?”

“You’ve been dick-over-heels for Ernst since we were sophomores in college,” Georg said, and Hanschen half-snorted, “And you think you’re _so_ slick for asking me about my boyfriend.”

Hanschen tilted his head like he’d caught Georg exactly where he wanted him. “How’d you know I was gonna say anything about your boyfriend?”

“You’re not as subtle as you always think you are, Hanschen. Really.”

“Harsh. I’m not _asking_ you about your boyfriend; I know him. I’ve heard it all.” Hanschen waved a hand at him. “Bartender at that restaurant you like downtown, loves the ocean, grew up by the Great Lakes, knows everything about boats and fish and all, looks good in navy blue, usually tops—“

Georg burst out into shocked laughter. “Jesus, Hanschen—“

“And now you’re— what was it? —‘dick-over-heels’ and writing a musical for him.”

“Not _for_ him.”

“Oh. About him.”

“Not _about_ him, either, _God_.” Georg grabbed the pen, scribbling on a paper again. “Inspired by him, I guess.”

Hanschen snickered without any real malice. Just harmless bite. “Cute.”

“If you’re gonna make fun of me, go do it away from my piano,” Georg said mildly. “I’m busy.”

“Busy not writing your song?”

“No. Busy writing it. If I can figure out how to write the stars in.”

Hanschen propped his chin up in his hand, taking a breath to ground him back to thoughtfulness. The clock ticked.

It was late. So, so late.

“I’m, uh.” Georg coughed. “I’m gonna propose. To Otto.”

Hanschen’s eyes bulged. “What?”

“Not, like, soon, but...” Georg looked down, positioning his fingers gingerly over the keys and playing a soft arpeggio. “Someday.”

Hanschen swallowed. He nodded.

“I just have to get somewhere first. If this project goes well, if I can get my name on the radar somewhere, if anything I write is good enough...” Georg trailed off. _If I’m good enough._ “Then.”

“Then.” Hanschen repeated.

“Yeah.”

Another moment of silence, aside from Georg’s gentle playing. Wistful. His fingers weren’t dancing, like so many people liked to describe it; playing wasn’t just a dance. It was like life. It was as if together, Georg and the piano were something new and great and living, and apart, they were just pieces. It was as if the quiet notes and the mindless songs were how he breathed.

He loved this.

He loved through this.

“Georg.” Hanschen’s voice wasn’t quiet enough to be a whisper, but it was softer than before. _Mezzo piano._

“Mm?”

“Remember how you used to go on about when we’d move to the city? Back in the library?”

“Mm.”

Hanschen nodded once, thinking hard. “Look outside.”

Georg turned to look at him quizzically. Hanschen only folded his arms together, motioning with his head towards the closed blinds behind the piano bench.

Georg stood, suddenly aware of the tightness in his legs and the sharp ache in his back and the cracking of his joints that felt like some sick physical representation of being awake for over twenty hours. He stretched, stumbled a step to the window, and shot Hanschen one more dubious glance before lifting a hand to part and look through the blinds.

It was just their street, a few stories below, doused in the glow of streetlights and headlights and other apartments.

It was just another street in a city full of streets Georg would have died to live on when he was younger.

And it was light, even at night. Light with that kind of dingy, grimy shine of a city. Light with the kind of sleepless glow that had drawn Georg here to begin with.

It was light, and it was far from perfect. But it was bronze.

It was silver.

It was gold.

Hanschen had moved to stand next to him at some point, the slightest, smuggest little smile on his lips. “Aren’t those your stars out there?”

Georg said nothing.

“The song. It sounds like you. It’s inspired by Otto.” Hanschen was whispering now. _Pianissimo_. “It’s _about_ this.”

Georg let go of the blinds, breezing back to the piano, and Hanschen followed back to where he’d perched before. Georg picked up the pen. Scribbled words in the margins of one of the papers on the stand. Pushed his glasses up his nose in concentration. Thought. Wrote. Loved.

“You know the tune.”

Hanschen pushed his hair off his forehead. “I know it in five keys.”

“Even better.” Georg gathered some of his papers into order above the keys, sliding one across the lid to Hanschen. “I’m gonna play. Sing along till the lyrics stop. I’m gonna try to keep playing past there and see what happens.”

“Excellent.”

“Not excellent yet.” Georg ran one hand over the keys. A glissando for energy. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Hanschen inhaled.

Georg clenched his jaw. Closed his eyes.

Played.

_Orion could let me hide behind his silver shield_

_Or I could find the world defined just past Perseus’ heel_

_They say you leave the world each time you set out to the sea_

_They think the dark just swallows alive, but darkness isn’t real_

_Silver night_

_Led me to loving silver light_

_Why ravage earth for gold when silver skies_

_Gleam with the shine of heaven’s door?_

_I don’t know why I try_

_To understand a world that lulls at night_

_To fight a battle when I’m not a knight_

_Isn’t love what living life is for?_

_Silver love_

_Cygnus could be my own silver dove_

_If I just knew why the stars always lead me back out to shore._

Hanschen set his paper down on the piano lid, eyes half-shut, just listening to Georg play. He was breathing into the keys, breathing out through the notes, playing anything and everything he could think to play beyond what was scrawled on the page. Improvising, projecting, reflecting, creating, thinking.

Loving.

It was far from perfect. But it was bronze.

It was silver.

It was gold.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments, kudos, etc. make me insanely happy— I might even feel inspired to compose the song from the fic... I’m on tumblr @hanschen-ril0w !


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